


In A Name

by trikruklark



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dialogue dissection, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 06:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5902765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trikruklark/pseuds/trikruklark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every time Clarke’s name leaves Lexa’s lips, something between them changes. It’s intangible: a look, a thought, a feeling, but it’s always there, and it’s always real.</p><p>Even when they wish it wasn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In A Name

"Do you have an answer for me, Clarke, of the sky people?"

She doesn't know it yet, but this is the start of everything. This girl, standing before her with determination in her eyes and a reproach on her lips, marks the moment Lexa's world shifts on its axis. It's happened before. Her life is continuously altering and shifting as life teaches her hard lessons. Like the lesson on the day she met Costia, when she was taught love, and her world revolved around it. Or the day she first went to war, and learned confidence and command.

Like the lesson taught when her love's head was delivered in a satchel by the Ice Queen, and she learned sacrifice.

Every choice, every consequence, changes her, and she expects no less from this Skaikru girl, who burned 300 of her people alive, and is quick to admit it.

But Clarke is different. A change marked not by death, but life, and her willingness to live it. The effect she brings is all-encompassing, rearranging everything Lexa knows, until a new balance is found. Clarke is equilibrium—a compromise between what Lexa has to be: strong, unflinching, and hard; and what she allows herself to be: compassionate, loving, and warm.

She doesn't know it yet, but Clarke changes _everything._

***

“Clarke.”

She has demons behind her eyes. Lexa can see them as if they were her own, plagued by hard decision and inner turmoil, fighting over what's right, and what must be done. It's an affliction Lexa has long since immunized herself to, but Clarke is young, and new to command. She doesn't know how to crush uncertainty under the weight of unquestionable conviction.

She hands Clarke a torch and allows her the compassion of burning away her weakness.

She can only hope that Clarke understands this for what it is, that the potential Lexa sees in her isn't buried beneath a mountain of pride or guarded by a wall of impregnable ignorance. She's known people of that kind before. The ones who go so far, only to fall short on their own sword.

It doesn't surprise her anymore, the shortcomings of those around her.

“Yu gonplei ste odon.”

And yet their strengths can catch her off guard so easily.

It's four words that Lexa's people learn before they're out of infancy, and yet this Skaikru girl recites them, and it seems like a tremendous feat has been accomplished. Maybe it has.

She takes a moment to look at Clarke. Her demon-haunted eyes reflect the flame, absorb the light into herself until her demons scream and writhe in pain.

She does not crush her uncertainty. She incinerates it.

Lexa doesn't allow herself the useless flicker of camaraderie over one show of strength in a tide of decisions that Clarke has yet to make, but she permits the approval she feels, and looks over to her with it.

They speak, and in spite of everything Lexa knows, Clarke is fire, and camaraderie's flame rises in her presence. She doesn't want it, and yet it feels so good to give in and allow the embers room to breathe. So she does.

“The dead are gone, Clarke.”

And Lexa truly believes she's strong enough to understand.

***

“I was wrong about you, Clarke. Your heart shows no sign of weakness.”

It's realization and revelation in one, and she's not so weak she can't admit when she's wrong. Clarke's motivations are familiar, a line of thought she no longer allows herself, has discarded for something more pragmatic. And yet, it's Clarke's judgment that saves her life, and Clarke's actions that lead them to safety.

There's value in the path that Clarke embraces—in quick, reactionary action that can save people's lives. It's not a path Lexa can justify using herself; she belongs to too many people, decides the fates of thousands in every action she takes. Clarke is different. It's something she has to remember—that no matter how many similarities they share, Clarke is not one of her people; that the people Clarke commands aren't Trikru people.

Lexa's mistakes aren't Clarke's mistakes, and she doesn't know how to express that, but she can renege her disapproval, show Clarke that she _understands._ That she isn't dismissing her, that she can accept this lesson just as Clarke has accepted all of hers.

Clarke is her own person. She's strength, and steadfast will, an entity all to herself. Lexa sees that. Lexa sees her.

Her axis tilts.

***

“ _Clarke!”_

She can't go after her. She can't be reactionary, can't be Clarke. But Clarke's running into camp, and a missile is on its way, and Lexa _wants_. She wants to follow after her, wants to lead her back to safety. She wants Clarke to understand that she's more than just a daughter right now, that her life is more than something to sacrifice for people who can't do what she does.

But she isn't Clarke, and what she wants doesn't matter.

She hesitates, hovers where Clarke left her, and turns away.

There's a mantra in her head, about weakness and duty, and she believes every word of it. But Clarke is so different, and so the same, and their similarities cross over and interweave, until Lexa confuses Clarke's way for her own. It's so tempting to give in. It's so tempting to look back.

She keeps walking.

The missile rushes overhead. Lexa closes her eyes, breathes deep. She knows who she is. She isn't Clarke, brash and impulsive. She isn't Lexa, a young girl who loved wrongly, who chose weakness over reality.

She is Heda, commander of Trikru, and she will not flinch from her duty for just one girl. Not even this one.

It doesn't alleviate the weight in her chest, or the burning in her eyes. It doesn't stop the rushing of her heart or the pounding cry in her head, but it's true, and irrefutable, and she accepts it. Just like she accepts every lesson this life has given her. She will be strong, she will be sensible. She won't look back for one girl. She won't repeat a mistake she's already learned a lesson from.

She won't.

She looks back.

_***_

“Clarke!”

Clarke stands there, facing death and destruction, about to walk right in again. Lexa can stop her this time. She doesn't have to war against past lessons to grab Clark'e shoulders and turn her away from the flames. She can hold her, and stop her from making a decision while she's too emotional to measure the worth of what she wants against the worth of her life. As if Clarke's life isn't worth everything in that crater.

She touches Clarke, and she's real. She's here, with Lexa; not another mistake, but a force of will that's shattering under the impact of that missile. There are demons behind her eyes, and they're impervious to fire. Lexa won't let them have her.

Not now. Not for a burden that Lexa knows how to bear.

Clarke looks at her with the eyes of someone who's never borne the brunt of a decision as real as this one, and Lexa understands like so few others can. And she guides. Leads Clarke away from circling thoughts of despair and remorse, and reminds her of who she is. Of what she has to do.

Clarke latches on to just one purpose, just one man, and Lexa can see an iteration of herself in Clarke's eyes, the same mistake in a different setting. She can't stop Clarke, can't teach this lesson as a forewarning when Clarke has already made it in everything but action. What she can do, finally, is ensure her safety while Clarke goes down her chosen path.

So she does. Because Clarke is worth following. Because Clarke will get past this, and be stronger for it. She'll conquer this lesson like she has all the others, and Lexa will be there,  standing beside her, helping her fight the demons in her eyes. Because she _can_ , and there are somehow far too few things she can allow herself to do with Clarke. She won't deny herself this.

They move, and Lexa doesn't grab Clarke's shoulder. Doesn't hold her hand. But she's there, to catch her, if she stumbles and falls. Because that, she can do.

***

“I do trust you, Clarke.”

Octavia is a loose end, a rogue variable; a weakness. To Lexa. Not to Clarke. It's a harsh reminder, that Clarke's people are not her people. That what she knows must match up with what Clarke does before she takes action against Skaikru.

Clarke's lessons do not fall lightly on Lexa's ears. Her own have never fallen lightly on Clarke's.

But she needs Clarke to know, more than anything, that she isn't merely bending to the rules of their alliance. What she's doing now is because it's Clarke, and Clarke holds her trust more than rules hold Lexa back. The alliance doesn't hold a flame to Lexa's regard for what she thinks. What she knows.

It's a weakness, this feeling, but Clarke is strength. Lexa trusts, with the little of her heart that remains entirely her own—not devoted to Trikru, not devoted to the coalition—that Clarke's strength can carry her weakness. That having just a little, imparted to someone as strong as her, doesn't have to end in tragedy.

She trusts, and she hopes, and she feels everything she knows she can't. Because maybe, just maybe, she can give that one piece of her heart what it deserves.

She kisses Clarke.

There are so many different ways this could end, so many ways the world could punish her with harsh lessons about trust and hope and love. She shuts out what she knows, thinks only about what she wants, and she shares her weakness, a secret against Clarke's lips.

Clarke kisses her back.

It isn't magic, it isn't electricity. It's warmth, and comfort, and safety. Lexa wants to bask in it. Wants to embrace Clarke in her arms and never let her go.

It's a moment, untainted by everything around them. And then it ends.

She wants Clarke. Not with just the small piece of her heart she can afford to call her own, but with the rest of it, too. She wants Clarke with the unwavering certainty her time as Heda has made the only way she can want anything. But she can't have her. Can't own her, can't command her or control her, and she doesn't want to.

Because Clarke should get what she wants, what she deserves, too. And that's not her.

Not yet.

***

“I'm sorry, Clarke.”

She was wrong. About everything.

For one moment, just one, among all the others in her life of command, she had believed that she could do both what was needed of her, and what she wanted. And she was wrong.

It's a lesson she has to learn all over again. The most basic, fundamental one, one she kept at the core of her very being. One that Costia's blank stare had carved into her chest. It tears through her just as strongly as the first time. There is no immunity to the pain on Clarke's face. The betrayal written clearly in her eyes. There is no way to dull the sting of a lesson twice-learned.

At least Clarke is here. Living, breathing, able to feel the pain shared between them. It's the smallest consolation she has, one she grasps as strongly as she can while she struggles not to flinch against her duty. Clarke is alive, and she's strong, and she will get past this, just as Lexa will.

Both of them will be okay.

She doesn't want to be okay.

She doesn't want to _just_ survive. She wants more than that—Clarke by her side, her pain to disappear, the weight of the world to ease off her shoulders. She wants Clarke's trust in her to be well-founded.

It's one life against hundreds, and she knows that. What she wants, personally, selfishly, doesn't matter when faced with the lives of the men and women straggling out of that door. Her people matter. Those lives matter. The relief from pain and suffering her people feel _matter_. More than one strong, amazing, anguishing girl.

She takes a breath. Looks the woman she betrayed in the eye, accepts the burden of what she has done, and she leaves.

She doesn't look back.

Her axis revolts.

***

“Hello, Clarke.”

There's a war raging inside herself. It's a war of emotion: the most dangerous kind. There are too many people here for anything but stalwart conviction, and she rallies. She is Heda, and she has business to attend to before she can be Lexa, who has dreamed and dreaded this day since she left Clarke on that battlefield. She doesn't have to rally for long.

It's easy to dismiss everyone. Easy to give a command and be obeyed. It's harder staring into Clarke's eyes. Feeling the stab of her jagged, betrayed glare as Lexa approaches her.

She can see their last farewell in that look. There's a rawness to Clarke, like a wound that bleeds at the scab, never given the opportunity to fully heal. She takes the gag from her mouth, and wishes this meeting could be different. She doesn't want to touch Clarke when she's something detestable in her eyes. Doesn't want Clarke forced in her presence, when she isn't ready for this confrontation.

She's well-taught in how little what she wants affects the world.

It's a travesty that Clarke is, too.

But she still has Lexa's secret, buried deep within her chest. She still has determination in her eyes and a reproach on her lips, and she's _here_. Changed, evolved, just like Lexa is, but still _Clarke_ , still the woman she had come to know, come to love, in the time they'd spent together. And that could be enough, if they let it.

It's not in herself to flounder, to grasp at words, so she doesn't. Every sentence is picked with care, every word vying to express all the things she, Heda, commander of Trikru—that she, Lexa, uselessly hopeful girl—can't say. It's an arduous dredge of pulled words that don't do either of them justice, but it's her start. It's her third chance, to see if lessons learned can be navigated into something resembling happiness.

Because it's Clarke, and she's here, and that's two impossibilities that Lexa could never have foreseen all those months ago, when a Skaikru girl stood before her and bartered for the lives of her people.

It's so hard to douse hope when in proximity to the fire that makes up Clarke's very being.

She watches Clarke get dragged away, voice breaking under the threats she shouts, and rallies.

She's Lexa, Heda, commander of Trikru. She crushes uncertainty under the weight of her conviction. She won't allow her one weakness, buried deep between two chests, to claim victory over their joined strength. Clarke is here, safe, out of the cold grasp of the Ice Queen, and that's enough.

The rest? That will come later. Because Clarke is here, and they have time. They can make time.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd just like to say that this story's other summary was going to be: Haha wow Lexa sure is Super Gay isn't she? She has no chill at all with all that name dropping and I respect that. For some reason the summary I chose just seemed a little better. Idk. You can find me over on tumblr at trikru-klark!


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